Libyan militias from towns throughout the country's west parade through Tripoli, Libya, on February 14, 2012. (photo credit: AP/Abdel Magid Al Fergany, file)
More than 20 people were killed in fighting this week between rival tribes in southern Libya, a medical official said Sunday, in violence reportedly sparked by an incident involving a monkey.
Witnesses said several homes were hit by rockets and shells in the confrontation.
Nasser al-Jehimi of the medical center in Sabha said 21 people were killed and around 100 others injured in clashes since Tuesday in the city between Awlad Suleiman tribal members and the Gaddafa tribe of Libya’s toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi.
The casualty toll was for the Awlad Suleiman tribe alone as information was not immediately available from another hospital being used for their rivals.
The cause of the fighting was unclear, but Libyan and social media said it erupted after a monkey belonging to one tribe attacked a child from the other camp.
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Salah Badr, a member of Sabha city council, declined to give specifics but noted that relations between the two tribes had been strained for many years.
Caricatures of former Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi and his son as monkeys in Benghazi, Libya. (Wikimedia Commons)
“A minor incident sparked the fire,” he told AFP.
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Since the downfall of Gaddafa in Libya’s 2011 revolution, the country has been riven by deadly unrest and political divisions.
Regular inter-tribal clashes in Sabha have left several dozen people dead.
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